When searched within India, Google's Blogspot points to username.blogspot.in as opposed to username.blogspot.com (also in search engines). Most permalinks users use to share are country specific which also reflect on Google Search.<p>Looks like blogspot.in was picked up by a non Google entity.<p><pre><code> Domain Name: blogspot.in
Registry Domain ID: DE2DC9C0E8E694C28ADEF0F444F121B45-IN
Registrar WHOIS Server:
Registrar URL: www.domainming.com
Updated Date: 2020-06-29T20:00:06Z
Creation Date: 2020-06-24T20:00:05Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2021-06-24T20:00:05Z
Domain Status: inactive http://www.icann.org/epp#inactive
</code></pre>
There is a ceritificate for the blogspot.in along with other blogspot.* domains. Would they end up revoking all the certificates if challenged?<p>https://crt.sh/?q=blogspot.in
This is one of the main reasons I tried garnering interest around a blogging app idea I had: If you blog with a third party service, eventually your blog will go away due to an acquihire, company shutdown, merger, or whatever happened in this instance (google forgot to renew a domain?). If you want to write seriously with a multi-decade perspective, you need to host it yourself, and I wanted to make that easy to manage for an average Joe. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck gathering interest! Technical people understand the idea but just roll their own using eg Jekyll; and Non-technical people don't get the idea, or dont seem to care.<p>The idea is here: <a href="http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/" rel="nofollow">http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/</a><p>Anyway if anyone has advice i'm all ears :)
I'm surprised no-one mentioned Mark Monitor[0] (no affiliation). A lot of big brand corporations use it to protect their intellectual property. Can you imagine, for example, someone getting their hands on `apple.com` or `icloud.com`. They could wreak havoc since a lot of iDevices use those two domains in order to function and you could pwn many devices if you were determined enough. I imagine MM solves the 10-year time window problem by ensuring the domain lives well on into the future. It's what they do.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.markmonitor.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.markmonitor.com</a>
The original reason for the per-country domains was to allow Google to "continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law."<p>It arose around the question "Does a judge in country A have the ability to censor content in country B?". Google has long argued that a judge does not have this authority.<p><a href="https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/2402711" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/2402711</a>
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2012/1/31/2761454/google-blogger-automatic-redirect-censorship-cctld" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2012/1/31/2761454/google-blogger-au...</a>
Honestly the whole notion of losing your domain if you accidentally don't pay is pretty silly. A domain in usage is obviously meant to continue, even if an organization misses a process to renew.<p>Far better would be that a domain is yours in perpetuity until you <i>explicitly</i> cancel it. If you don't pay, you get bills, or it goes to collections, or the domain temporarily stops resolving or something... but you shouldn't <i>lose</i> it. (If a person passes away, their estate figures out what to do with it.)<p>The notion that if you forget to pay, 60 days later it's gone (poof), just seems like a dumb policy in the first place.<p>And for those wondering how a business forgets to renew, it's pretty easy: the employee (A) in charge of managing renewals is let go, and so is their manager (B) at around the same time, so the manager (B) doesn't transfer responsibility from (A) to a new person, and <i>their</i> manager (C) doesn't realize the original employee two levels down (A) never had their responsibility transferred, because that was B's job.
Just another reason to always, always claim your own domain. If you rely on someone else's domain, you have no control over it.<p>Although it must be said: even your own registered domain can be lost. Generally due to you not paying attention, but I believe it has also happened that a registrar fucked up and sold a customer's domain to someone else.<p>Maybe we need better regulation for this sort of thing. If you get a new phone subscription with a different phone provider, the phone providers are required (in the EU at least) to allow you to keep your phone number, because so many things are tied to it. The same is true for email addresses and websites. Breaking this can cause serious problems to people.
ask hn: how could this have happened? According to <a href="https://www.domain.com/blog/2018/11/01/domain-name-expirations-what-you-need-to-know/" rel="nofollow">https://www.domain.com/blog/2018/11/01/domain-name-expiratio...</a>, there's supposed to be a 30 + 30 days grace period following domain expiry, where the original registrant can claim the domain. Was blogspot.in really down for 60 days and nobody noticed?
<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ablogspot.in" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ablogspot.in</a><p>480,000 results for me. All broken. Wow.
Most likely they claim the domain back quickly? Yes?<p>But that’s a massive mess up by Google. I know blogspot is not any at focus product for them but still it should hurt.
Apart from the massive list of broken bookmarks, am also wondering what is the risk of the new owners attempting some kind of phishing fraud on unsuspecting non-technical users?<p>Really surprised by Google dropping the ball like this...
The registrar "domainming"(domainming.com) of .in domains, is the biggest abuser of nixi policies. NIXI specifically says that registrars themselves cannot participate in dropcatching and selling, but the owner of domainming Mr. Salim, goes on with his business unperturbed. I am sure like how the Indian registrar mitsu was banned by NIXI for violation of policies, the same way I am certain that law will catch up with domainming.
There's clearly no fail-safe (even moderately so) solution to this problem on the centralized internet. Yet more reason for Secure Scuttlebutt, Dat and IPFS to exist.
Counterexample:<p>AWS announced that they were going to disable links to files hosted on S3 that used a deprecated format. But after much outcry about how many links would be broken, they [1] back tracked.<p><a href="https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=6776" rel="nofollow">https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=6776</a><p>[1] Should I be saying “we” now that I have been working for AWS for less than a month? I’m not use to being identified as an employee at BigTech.
IPFS will fix this. Permanently and forever. Move to Web3. The Big Tech firms are providing the incentive towards Web3/IPFS apparently not just by their rampant political censorship but also by breaking links. Everything about Big Tech monopolies is just harmful to the web. People are fed up with it.
Use content addressing. There are still many rough edges to be worked through but IPFS and others don’t get enough attention when stuff like this comes up on HN.
I would probably use Switcheroo Redirector extension if I needed a quick fix, but I'll keep you posted with better solutions.<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/switcheroo-redirector/cnmciclhnghalnpfhhleggldniplelbg?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/switcheroo-redirec...</a>
Thanks a lot! Yes, Open Live Writer sounds very similar to what I'd be making. To be honest I hadn't heard of it.
<a href="https://futuremirror.info" rel="nofollow">https://futuremirror.info</a>
It doesn't seem like Google had forgotten to renew the domain, may be blogspot is next on line?[1]<p>[1]<a href="https://killedbygoogle.com" rel="nofollow">https://killedbygoogle.com</a>
Google doesn't use a service like Markmonitor or one of the dozens of other professional asset management companies to register their domains?<p>Huh.
Google is slowly becoming the destroyer of the (old) internet. (See amp, removal of urls, etc) I'm fairly certain I don't like really the new internet, even if some of the url re-representations are reasonably nice.
dang, is this comment <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769393" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769393</a> causing this post to erroneously show up in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/ask" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/ask</a>?
A great example of why domain owners need domain name insurance. Domain insurance protects the owner from the loss of the domain, from UDRPs, expiring domains, failed renewals, stolen domains, etc.<p>If it's a high-value domain (or if one that you just can't lose), then there other options, such as a registrar lock, or simply registering it for 100 years (i.e., Network Solutions), or even forever (Epik offers a forever domain registration). But that doesn't protect the domain owner from losing it via UDRP, lawsuit, Trademark issue, or having it stolen from them.
To be honest I never got why Blogger bothered with a country specific domain when visiting a blog<p>This sounded like a problem waiting to happen<p>I understand onboarding your customers using a custom domain per country but not just switching (to the domain of the visitor, not of the blog even!)
<sarcasm> People are easier to control if they don't talk. Average Joe should not have a say in anything, he should not have a voice at all. So you give him a bit of toilet paper to write his stuff on and toss it in the loo.